Music and how it's changed.

I’ve always loved music. As a young whipper snapper I remember sitting on the floor of my bedroom with a radio waiting for my favorite songs to come on. I would sneak cassette tapes from our family stash and put tape over the slots on top. This I learned from a friend allowed me to overwrite the pre-recorded contents with my music! When my song would come on I’d simultaneously press the RECORD and PLAY buttons as close to the beginning as possible. I would then listen through and hit STOP when it was over.

Times have changed, and dramatically doesn’t begin to describe these changes. I no longer have to wait, nor do I need Scotch and cassette tapes or have to deliberately overwrite content on ‘removable media’. We live in the digital age and music and information is freely and readily available. I thought back to those days sitting on my bedroom floor this morning as I drove to work. Instead of tuning my radio to a favorite station I simply unlocked my iPhone, opened my last.fm app and started playing “Shinedown Radio”. There’s no DJ and I can choose virtually any artist imaginable. The service aggregates music tastes among its users and then plays similar songs to the bands you like.

In the recent past, music was exclusively available stored on records, cassettes tapes and over the airwaves. The advances in technology have changed the music landscape in terms of its recording and distribution. Think Napster, Grokster, Kazaa, Limewire. I’m not advocating you illegally “file-share”, but what I am saying is that music is increasingly prolific. A more legal approach would be over-the-air music distribution via live-feed like Pandora and last.fm.